MOCpages has gotten a ton of traffic this summer, tons more than we ever could have anticipated when we bought and installed all our new servers this past fall.

As a result, last week, one of our our web servers crashed spectacularly under the excessive load. By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed. We have backups, and our systems admins have been working constantly over the past week, restoring all your images and using temporary extra servers to run MOCpages in the meantime.

I appreciate your patience as we buy and install new servers over the coming weeks and plan for future capacity.Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
MOCpages has gotten a ton of traffic this summer, tons more than we ever could have anticipated when we bought and installed all our new servers this past fall.

As a result, last week, one of our our web servers crashed spectacularly under the excessive load. By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed. We have backups, and our systems admins have been working constantly over the past week, restoring all your images and using temporary extra servers to run MOCpages in the meantime.

I appreciate your patience as we buy and install new servers over the coming weeks and plan for future capacity.

Hay, at least this meens the site is getting more popular. We could be the next facebook.Permalink

Quoting Ben (Flare) .
it might be a good idea to clean up some of the inactive MOCcers and groups.

Thanks, but as I have mentioned in the past, storing old things has nothing to do with server speed... That's like asking if throwing out an old shirt will make you a faster runner.

The old creations are what make MOCpages awesome. The oldest MOCs have been here for 8 years and it's great to know they'll always be there. Besides, lots of people come here every day even though they don't post new things all the time.Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
MOCpages has gotten a ton of traffic this summer, tons more than we ever could have anticipated when we bought and installed all our new servers this past fall.

As a result, last week, one of our our web servers crashed spectacularly under the excessive load. By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed. We have backups, and our systems admins have been working constantly over the past week, restoring all your images and using temporary extra servers to run MOCpages in the meantime.

I appreciate your patience as we buy and install new servers over the coming weeks and plan for future capacity.

Im sure everything will be back to normal, including the pictures. I remember reading somehwere that they have all the pictures on backup servers or something. Theyll be back, no reuploading needed.Permalink

Thanks, but as I have mentioned in the past, storing old things has nothing to do with server speed... That's like asking if throwing out an old shirt will make you a faster runner.

The old creations are what make MOCpages awesome. The oldest MOCs have been here for 8 years and it's great to know they'll always be there. Besides, lots of people come here every day even though they don't post new things all the time.

Quoting Sean Kenney
MOCpages has gotten a ton of traffic this summer, tons more than we ever could have anticipated when we bought and installed all our new servers this past fall.

As a result, last week, one of our our web servers crashed spectacularly under the excessive load. By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed. We have backups, and our systems admins have been working constantly over the past week, restoring all your images and using temporary extra servers to run MOCpages in the meantime.

I appreciate your patience as we buy and install new servers over the coming weeks and plan for future capacity.

I kinda figured. My account has been extremely unstable. Sometimes I can get on, sometimes I can't. But I guess this site really IS popular. Are you able to give us...a rough estimate of when it'll be back up and running smoothly?Permalink

1) All your images are fine. We're restoring them from backups right now and you will see them appearing soon. It takes a long time because there are so many images (tens of millions.)

2) I'm not sure how long it will take until everything is back 100%, but it shouldn't be much longer. We've put the site back up in the meantime so you can at least use all the other features of MOCpages (like groups) while we're getting things put back together. We might take it down here & there (usually only during late nights, USA time) as we do more work each day.

3) The "web server not responding" errors you all saw just before our crash were because so many people were coming to MOCpages at the exact same time that the server couldn't respond to everyone at once. We will solve this problem by adding lots of new web servers (instead of having just two) so that there will always be enough processing power for everyone to visit at once.

4) The image server crash was only tangentially related to the high traffic. (The more people visiting, the more work our hard drives are doing, uploading and downloading images.) The images are stored on 5 different hard drives, so that if one or two crashes, the others will be there. But we had three crash, all at once, which is unheard of. To solve this problem, we'll get 10 to 12 hard drives, with up-to-the-instant backups across the drives, so that even if half of them all die at the same time, everything will still work fine.

5) Please don't use ad blockers. If you block the ads, MOCpages doesn't get paid (We need the money from the ads to buy all these servers and keep them running every month!) Using ad blockers is like sneaking into a movie theater for free.Permalink

Thanks for clearing all that up Sean. I'm glad that I don't have any ad blockers! And what would be the estimated time of installation for these 10-12 new servers? Would it be in the next few days, or the next few weeks? Reason for asking is because I, and all of the other Mocpages members, would love to see the Pages back up and running smoothly. Is there anything that us members can do to help "lighten the load" on these new servers, say as in deleting double comments that we make on mocs or in group conversations, or deleting double creations (when we post a new creation and it creates two pages for that creation instead of just one)?Permalink

Quoting Kyle Peckham
And what would be the estimated time of installation for these 10-12 new servers?

Many, many months. But in the meantime we will bring the site back to normal using a combination of our existing (repaired) servers plus some servers we're borrowing. That way, at least the site will behave properly (images will be back, everything will run normally, no crashing or slowdowns.) Once we've stabilized all that, we can purchase, install, and configure the new servers.

And again, deleting stuff doesn't make the server run faster. We need more speed, not more storage. (If MOCpages were a car, we'd need a bigger engine, not a bigger trunk.)Permalink

Quoting Kyle Peckham
say as in deleting double comments that we make on mocs or in group conversations, or deleting double creations (when we post a new creation and it creates two pages for that creation instead of just one)?

I believe they're coming very slowly, I just reloaded this page and some people's icons appeared when they hadn't before. It's just how the hard drives are slowly getting back up to speed.

I have a question: I can use the image uploader now, but when I preview my page, all of my pics are broken: does this mean that no pics will show up or does it mean that they will when the hard drives come back?Permalink

i noticed before the pictures went down that uploading was faulty. is there any possibility that the crash effected the performance of that feature, will uploading be operational right now, and if not how long?Permalink

Well look at the bright side. Some of you have learned to back up your photos and mocs, or no. You can appreciate moc a bit more. And the old buddy icons are sort of funny. Look, I am a clone kiddie. Always try to see the problem as half full ans opposed to vice versa.Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
Many, many months. But in the meantime we will bring the site back to normal using a combination of our existing (repaired) servers plus some servers we're borrowing. That way, at least the site will behave properly (images will be back, everything will run normally, no crashing or slowdowns.) Once we've stabilized all that, we can purchase, install, and configure the new servers.

And again, deleting stuff doesn't make the server run faster. We need more speed, not more storage. (If MOCpages were a car, we'd need a bigger engine, not a bigger trunk.)

Thanks for clearning that up, Sean. It's great to hear that you are working on the problem! In the meantime, let's all work on that model we've been building so it'll be ready when MocPages is back up! Thanks for working on the site, Sean!Permalink

Thanks, but as I have mentioned in the past, storing old things has nothing to do with server speed... That's like asking if throwing out an old shirt will make you a faster runner.

The old creations are what make MOCpages awesome. The oldest MOCs have been here for 8 years and it's great to know they'll always be there. Besides, lots of people come here every day even though they don't post new things all the time.

I believe they're coming very slowly, I just reloaded this page and some people's icons appeared when they hadn't before. It's just how the hard drives are slowly getting back up to speed.

I have a question: I can use the image uploader now, but when I preview my page, all of my pics are broken: does this mean that no pics will show up or does it mean that they will when the hard drives come back?

yeah, i have been having the same trouble with the image up loader. Id finally finished my anniversary moc and my apology for being so inactive, and when i tried to upload the pictures, it did nothing. this was before the crash.Permalink

Quoting Captain McCoy™
I'm kind-of suprised that my buddy icon went back the Angry Cloud...it was one of my first buddy icons.

The older buddy icons were probably stored on an older, less active hard drive, and because the other new ones crashed, the hard drive with the old ones put up those old buddy icons as back up. When the broken hard drives are back up the newest icons will be back up.Permalink

First I have noticed that last week during the crash a few people got new creations on how was that possible? Second do you know what would have made all of the people fllod mocpages was it like a PB stunt or something. And finally what was the majority of people who floded mocpages?

Dear MOCpages Crew,
I would like to thank everyone, before I go on, for making MOCpages a great and fun site! I don't know how I would have inspiration to build with out you guys.
Now, for the formal stuff. I was wondering if you guys could add a chat feature to the site, or an online, offline thing so we know who is on or who isn't. It gets kind of boring trying to chat on Facebook and eMailing on Yahoo! when we can't access or don't know someone's stuff. Just a suggestion.
Thanks MOCpages Crew!,
Anthony D. Dryden IPermalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
Many, many months. But in the meantime we will bring the site back to normal using a combination of our existing (repaired) servers plus some servers we're borrowing. That way, at least the site will behave properly (images will be back, everything will run normally, no crashing or slowdowns.) Once we've stabilized all that, we can purchase, install, and configure the new servers.

And again, deleting stuff doesn't make the server run faster. We need more speed, not more storage. (If MOCpages were a car, we'd need a bigger engine, not a bigger trunk.)

Although, one could argue that the weight of the trunk adds to the mass of the car, which would in effect slow it down (at least until it gained enough inertia to keep going) and therefore lightening the load would put less strain on the engine.

Although, one could argue that the weight of the trunk adds to the mass of the car, which would in effect slow it down (at least until it gained enough inertia to keep going) and therefore lightening the load would put less strain on the engine.

Just sayin'. ;)

But the thing is, the servers don't have inertia, nor mass, in the sense of the files. Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
Many, many months. But in the meantime we will bring the site back to normal using a combination of our existing (repaired) servers plus some servers we're borrowing. That way, at least the site will behave properly (images will be back, everything will run normally, no crashing or slowdowns.) Once we've stabilized all that, we can purchase, install, and configure the new servers.

And again, deleting stuff doesn't make the server run faster. We need more speed, not more storage. (If MOCpages were a car, we'd need a bigger engine, not a bigger trunk.)

Do you know how long will it approximately take to restore the site's functionality?
I'm starting to miss this place, and the positive reinforcement it provides me :)Permalink

I think I'd like to echo Yuri's sentiment, and just say that I am eagerly awaiting the return of full functionality to the site. In the mean time though, I guess I'll just build lots of stuff and photograph it in preparation for upload when the site is healthy again. Finally, thank you to the MOCpages team for all their hard work trying to get the site running again!Permalink

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but have you looked into server virtualization? Direct on-hardware running of servers can be inefficient, and prone to data-loss in the event of a crash. A virtualization layer allows for better resource management and easy cloning of the server to allow for nearly-immediate failover to the backup. Over a hundred servers be effectively run simultaneously on a relatively small server cluster if it's set up right.Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed.

That is way more than a coincidence. Either there had to be some manufacturing flaw in that run of drives or some deeper problem in that server is killing them. You aren't using Western Digital Greens, are you? They do terribly in arrays.Permalink

Any reason why MOCpages can't rent Cloud space at peak times of the year? I presume that during school holidays / over the summer traffic increases big time. It would be a cheaper and more efficient option that would cope with fluctuations and not leave dormant servers the rest of the year.Permalink

Quoting David Garibaldi
Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but have you looked into server virtualization? Direct on-hardware running of servers can be inefficient, and prone to data-loss in the event of a crash. A virtualization layer allows for better resource management and easy cloning of the server to allow for nearly-immediate failover to the backup. Over a hundred servers be effectively run simultaneously on a relatively small server cluster if it's set up right.

Hear the man out Sean, it looks like he knows what he's talking about...Permalink

Quoting Decimator the NukeMaster
Maybe we should do a fundraiser to get Sean money. Or we should fire some Mods. :P

Excuse me? Nice attempt at a joke there but not funny. We do this for FREE because we love this site and what it offers the community. I could easily go on a 4 paragraph rant here about what we do to make you people happy and give you a nice FREE website that you can explore but I'll refrain.

Excuse me? Nice attempt at a joke there but not funny. We do this for FREE because we love this site and what it offers the community. I could easily go on a 4 paragraph rant here about what we do to make you people happy and give you a nice FREE website that you can explore but I'll refrain.

I know you were "trying" to be funny but...

if you are doing this for free is there any way that us the community can help out with the rebuilding of this great site?Permalink

Hey, thanks for all your hard work Sean and Mods... A lot of us who post both on Flickr and MOCpages have different "fans" at each site. Lots of them really like seeing all the photos for one MOC in one page under a single creation and so that's probably why MOCpages keeps getting more and more popular. So thanks from all us builders and all the fans. Will be great to have everything back online soon!Permalink

The final fix is still a long way away, but it's great to start seeing many of our images again! Thanks to everyone for your patience through all of this - just keep in mind that once all is said and done, MOCpages will be running better than ever. Hang in there, gang, and just build a TON in the mean time! ;)Permalink

Quoting Mark Kelso
The final fix is still a long way away, but it's great to start seeing many of our images again! Thanks to everyone for your patience through all of this - just keep in mind that once all is said and done, MOCpages will be running better than ever. Hang in there, gang, and just build a TON in the mean time! ;)

I have built alot in the past couple days, and finally finished the mega project I've been working on. I am too, soo happy to see some pictures again :)Permalink

Hey, thought I'd say, all the new pictures are all blanks, but I was able to add a new MOC today because I uploaded the pictures a few weeks ago, right before it crashed. I copied and pasted the HTML. Only problem is that you can't add a new picture for the main picture. Oh well, look forward to this coming back to normal.Permalink

Quoting Mark Kelso
The final fix is still a long way away, but it's great to start seeing many of our images again! Thanks to everyone for your patience through all of this - just keep in mind that once all is said and done, MOCpages will be running better than ever. Hang in there, gang, and just build a TON in the mean time! ;)

Thanks you guys!!! If it weren't for you there wouldn't be this awesome website!!!Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
MOCpages has gotten a ton of traffic this summer, tons more than we ever could have anticipated when we bought and installed all our new servers this past fall.

As a result, last week, one of our our web servers crashed spectacularly under the excessive load. By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed. We have backups, and our systems admins have been working constantly over the past week, restoring all your images and using temporary extra servers to run MOCpages in the meantime.

I appreciate your patience as we buy and install new servers over the coming weeks and plan for future capacity.

When do you think it will be fully working again?
I have some creations that I REALLY want to upload!
But I know I have to wait, but waiting is good for everyone.Permalink

Quoting Ben King
I have noticed that almost all the pictures are up, but all my pictures are gone, and my profile picture is gone too! will this be fixed or do I have to reload everything?

I've not heard anything from Sean about ANYONE needing to reload their images. Don't take my word as gospel on this, but it's my understanding all images are saved, and in time, all pics will be restored and appearing normally. How much time, I can't say. Unfortunately, I've not been given any time table.

Again, this is just the way I understand it. I actually haven't had any lengthy conversations with Sean about what to expect. I've wanted to leave him alone and let him do the work that he needs to do. I've known him long enough to have a great deal of faith in him, however, and I'd be very surprised if any images, new or old, were lost.Permalink

Quoting Mark Kelso
The final fix is still a long way away, but it's great to start seeing many of our images again! Thanks to everyone for your patience through all of this - just keep in mind that once all is said and done, MOCpages will be running better than ever. Hang in there, gang, and just build a TON in the mean time! ;)

Just wondering, why do some images come back before others, does each image show again one at a time...?Permalink

Quoting Mark Kelso
The final fix is still a long way away, but it's great to start seeing many of our images again! Thanks to everyone for your patience through all of this - just keep in mind that once all is said and done, MOCpages will be running better than ever. Hang in there, gang, and just build a TON in the mean time! ;)

I've been getting requests to build people's self-mocs, and I've been building at a rate of one per day. There's gonna be a lot of posting for me in the near future. Plus, I'm probably going to start a storyline for my mocs! Been checking every day if mocpages is back online, crossing my fingers...Permalink

Quoting Ape Fight
Any reason why MOCpages can't rent Cloud space at peak times of the year? I presume that during school holidays / over the summer traffic increases big time. It would be a cheaper and more efficient option that would cope with fluctuations and not leave dormant servers the rest of the year.

Cloud computing is not appropriate for a site as large and highly trafficked as MOCpges. Firstly, cloud computing terribly expensive. (Two to three times more expensive than our current architecture.) Additionally, cloud computing makes sense when there are spikes in traffic... We don't have that, we have tons of traffic, all the time. We have a 10 megabit connection, and we go over that threshold nearly every day. Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
Cloud computing is not appropriate for a site as large and highly trafficked as MOCpges. Firstly, cloud computing terribly expensive. (Two to three times more expensive than our current architecture.) Additionally, cloud computing makes sense when there are spikes in traffic... We don't have that, we have tons of traffic, all the time. We have a 10 megabit connection, and we go over that threshold nearly every day.

Thanks for relying to us Sean, it's good to see the site starting to work again. Permalink

It's great to see stuff is starting to get better, (although personally, I can only see a couple of photos.) But I just have a question, and I know it's been asked many times before;
But, as of now, how long (just roughly) is it going to be before everything is back to normal and working fine? I mean, are we talking Years, Months, Weeks, days?
I hope I don't seem impatient, I'm not, I'm just purely wondering.
Thanks, and great job on the speed at which you are repairing everything.
--R.K.--Permalink

Quoting Pippo Zane
Ehi Sean! Since the server crush I was not able to see my pictures anymore, should I cancel the blind and re-upload them? Should I wait a little longer? Thanks a lot, Mocpages is great!

From what I understand, the pictures will re-appear, so you don't need to re-upload them.Permalink

I'm curious to know if you will ever be able to recover the photos for the users. Since the crash, my computer has not been able to retrieve the files that follow accordingly to the MOCs. Any chance they can be retrieved?

How old does a (pre-crash) image have to be? I uploaded my last MOC about a month and a half ago so that was before the crash. I still have no imagaes whatsoever on my page besides my main one that I just uploaded.Permalink

Quoting Declan Muller
Please help. Will I have to replace ALL my lego creations????

Nope, they're all still there. There's NOTHING wrong with the stored images, it's just getting them from storage to the pages. Imagine it's like the pics are all in the shed outside and there's 14 feet of snow that we have to get through to get those images and bring them back into the house.

Your images are fine and will be up as soon as we can get em. Thanks for your patience.Permalink

Some of the images that I've uploaded since the crash are not loading right now, but they all were working a few hours ago. Is this a side effect from moving all the older backup photos to MOCpages?Permalink

Quoting Cody G
Some of the images that I've uploaded since the crash are not loading right now, but they all were working a few hours ago. Is this a side effect from moving all the older backup photos to MOCpages?

I don't know, I think the photos are a little unstable right now.Permalink

1) All your images are fine. We're restoring them from backups right now and you will see them appearing soon. It takes a long time because there are so many images (tens of millions.)

Oh, thankyou Sean.

Quoting Sean Kenney 2) I'm not sure how long it will take until everything is back 100%, but it shouldn't be much longer. We've put the site back up in the meantime so you can at least use all the other features of MOCpages (like groups) while we're getting things put back together. We might take it down here & there (usually only during late nights, USA time) as we do more work each day.

3) The "web server not responding" errors you all saw just before our crash were because so many people were coming to MOCpages at the exact same time that the server couldn't respond to everyone at once. We will solve this problem by adding lots of new web servers (instead of having just two) so that there will always be enough processing power for everyone to visit at once.

Thanks again!

Quoting Sean Kenney

4) The image server crash was only tangentially related to the high traffic. (The more people visiting, the more work our hard drives are doing, uploading and downloading images.) The images are stored on 5 different hard drives, so that if one or two crashes, the others will be there. But we had three crash, all at once, which is unheard of. To solve this problem, we'll get 10 to 12 hard drives, with up-to-the-instant backups across the drives, so that even if half of them all die at the same time, everything will still work fine.

I have no idea how to thank you for all your time and effort that goes into this site

Quoting Sean Kenney
5) Please don't use ad blockers. If you block the ads, MOCpages doesn't get paid (We need the money from the ads to buy all these servers and keep them running every month!) Using ad blockers is like sneaking into a movie theater for free.

And besides, if someone doesn't like the ads, they can ignore them!Permalink

Sorry if this has been asked somewhere before on this long topic. I noticed that the staff are working to restore pictures to their correct locations, my question is how can people see pictures yet I am unable to? Do I need to clear temp files or cache? Or is each persons acct being recovered as well?
Cheers
JoshPermalink

Quoting I Scream Clone
Sorry if this has been asked somewhere before on this long topic. I noticed that the staff are working to restore pictures to their correct locations, my question is how can people see pictures yet I am unable to? Do I need to clear temp files or cache? Or is each persons acct being recovered as well?
Cheers
Josh

Some of my really old photos are back up, as well as the new ones but the photos from july 15 2010 still aren't up yet.Permalink

Some of my really old photos are back up, as well as the new ones but the photos from july 15 2010 still aren't up yet.

Sorry, I meant to make that somewhat clearer. People are able to see my pictures that I have recently uploaded, yet I cannot. So my question is is the problem also related to each persons account and their ability to view images.

Go staff, you guys are doing a great job on fixing all this, and we shall await with patience for the completion of said repairs.Permalink

Quoting Adam Wolnikowski
I got my first profile picture back, not my current one,and I still dont have any of my MOC pics. Also, some of my HTML now looks like foriegn letters, which it didn't before.

From what I've been told, you're pics should return properly in time.

The HTML might be a different matter, assuming it's code you added to your page (vs. any that MOCpages automatically employs). My advice at the moment would be to continue to sit tight for your images to reappear. We'll be seeing ongoing fluctuations for a while. Once images do reappear, check your HTML at that point. You may need to re-enter some code if, at that stage, it's not in order.

I've gotten in the habit of checking every day to see if my stuff is back up. Should I check once a week or month instead? If bazillions of photos are being restored will it take until December? Not really frustrated...just looking at a realistic timetable?Permalink

On my NEW mac mini, some pics don't show up, but while i was on vacation, I checked mocpages on my ancient android and all pics but the first 'title' pics worked. What's going on? is this a problem with mocpages, or my computor?Permalink

Quoting John Beck
I've gotten in the habit of checking every day to see if my stuff is back up. Should I check once a week or month instead? If bazillions of photos are being restored will it take until December? Not really frustrated...just looking at a realistic timetable?

Quoting John Beck
I've gotten in the habit of checking every day to see if my stuff is back up. Should I check once a week or month instead? If bazillions of photos are being restored will it take until December? Not really frustrated...just looking at a realistic timetable?

I wouldn't say that's a bad habit at all. I'd keep checking in each day.

Unfortunately, Sean hasn't given us any time table either. I suspect he may not know, himself how long all of the upgrades and adjustments will take. Wish I could be of more help, but unfortunately I don't have any more specifics right now.Permalink

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate all the work you all do so I can enjoy a "free" site for my favorite hobby. I shall just be patient :-)

John

Quoting Mark Kelso

I wouldn't say that's a bad habit at all. I'd keep checking in each day.

Unfortunately, Sean hasn't given us any time table either. I suspect he may not know, himself how long all of the upgrades and adjustments will take. Wish I could be of more help, but unfortunately I don't have any more specifics right now.

Quoting Blitz the Thunder Spartan
Im not complaining, i was just wondering if I should be back to normal, because it seems like almost everyone is

Nope, there's still a LOT of people who are having issues.

And before anyone calls "conspiracy" here saying that we "got the important people going first" (Not saying you are Blitz, I just know that some people think it), so that everyone knows, Lee Jones is still not able to get any images either. So it's pretty random, hit and miss as to who is able to see images and who isn't.

Sean is really busting (you know what) to get this thing back to normal and we appriciate all of your patience. Hang in there, it'll be back to normal... soon.Permalink

And before anyone calls "conspiracy" here saying that we "got the important people going first" (Not saying you are Blitz, I just know that some people think it), so that everyone knows, Lee Jones is still not able to get any images either. So it's pretty random, hit and miss as to who is able to see images and who isn't.

Sean is really busting (you know what) to get this thing back to normal and we appriciate all of your patience. Hang in there, it'll be back to normal... soon.

Quoting Chris Phipson
And before anyone calls "conspiracy" here saying that we "got the important people going first" (Not saying you are Blitz, I just know that some people think it), so that everyone knows, Lee Jones is still not able to get any images either. So it's pretty random, hit and miss as to who is able to see images and who isn't.

Well, to be honest, Lee Jones isn't that important. He's only active, what, once or twice a year?Permalink

And before anyone calls "conspiracy" here saying that we "got the important people going first" (Not saying you are Blitz, I just know that some people think it), so that everyone knows, Lee Jones is still not able to get any images either. So it's pretty random, hit and miss as to who is able to see images and who isn't.

Sean is really busting (you know what) to get this thing back to normal and we appriciate all of your patience. Hang in there, it'll be back to normal... soon.

I still dont have any pictures working yet. I dont mean to be a bother, but when will all of the pictures be working again? Because I have 5 projects ready to upload and not having pictures for like a month is getting pretty annoying.Permalink

Quoting R.K. Blast
Is it still a problem that I can't see ANY pictures, bar three on my own homepage? Or are things still being sorted?
Thanks,
--R.K. Blast--

I can see probably around 60% of your home page images as of this morning. I might give it a few more days and then check back with us if no additional images have appeared.

I don't know how the restoration process is going, so unfortunately I can't give you an indication of whether what you're experiencing is out of the ordinary or not.

I might check in with Sean to ask if he can give me an update regarding the images, and where things stand. I know a lot of members have full recovery at this point, but there are still many who are without pics, as well.Permalink

Quoting Josh Cooper
I still dont have any pictures working yet. I dont mean to be a bother, but when will all of the pictures be working again? Because I have 5 projects ready to upload and not having pictures for like a month is getting pretty annoying.

Yeah, I can only imagine your frustration. As I mentioned above, I think I'll check with Sean in the next day or two about where things stand with image recovery, and if he can offer any information on when the last of the pages will finally get their pics back.

I want to ask this so I can get you some answers. I don't know how many others haven't seen any recovery yet, but I would like to know - and I'm sure you would, too - whether it's an issue of simply waiting a bit longer, or is something else is wrong and needs addressing?

I can see probably around 60% of your home page images as of this morning. I might give it a few more days and then check back with us if no additional images have appeared.

I don't know how the restoration process is going, so unfortunately I can't give you an indication of whether what you're experiencing is out of the ordinary or not.

I might check in with Sean to ask if he can give me an update regarding the images, and where things stand. I know a lot of members have full recovery at this point, but there are still many who are without pics, as well.

Thanks for getting back to me. And yes as of today I can see quite a few pictures. As you say, probably around 60-65% now.
Thanks.
--R.K. Blast--Permalink

I also have not gotten any pictures back. Everything that is there was posted after the crash. That, and my buddy icon never returned, so I tried a new one. Now it's just a black box. GLaD to hear most things are back up though. Permalink

Quoting Wheeljack 8824
I also have not gotten any pictures back. Everything that is there was posted after the crash. That, and my buddy icon never returned, so I tried a new one. Now it's just a black box. GLaD to hear most things are back up though.

I can see your Icon clearly.My icon disapeared and my mocs pictures still don't show though....Permalink

Okay gang, Sean was good enough to get back with me VERY quickly, and provided some more info that helps me understand the problem, as well as the recovery a bit better.

Bottom line is that it will, more than likely, be several more weeks before we all see complete image return. All images should return eventually, but we're not even close to the finish line.

All I can ask of those who aren't seeing any of their images yet, is to please try to hang in there. My concern was that some of you might not be seeing your pics for some other reason. But it appears that the recovery process is very complex, as well as slow (due to a certain process of transferring data). So again, the crash and recovery will still be the cause of missing images for at least another few weeks, but all of your pics should return eventually.Permalink

It doesn't matter to me how long it takes for the site to be at 100% just as long as it is 100% when it is finished (obviously *gets hit on the head with a Baseball Bat) regardless of how long it takes to do the work needed to get the "Ol' Girl" up and running as good as new! Remember, we want the job done right! not have the job done fast.Permalink

Quoting Kane Sagar
Nearly everyones photos are back up all except mine. I went to organise my photos and it came up saying. 'You only have 76 photos' thoses are just the ones that i had recently posted a few days ago. I'm afraid of all my other photos have been deleted please help.

Plenty of people don't have any photos yet, just be patient. Permalink

From trial and error, I have discovered that PNG photos end up becoming black boxes in the buddy icon feature here on MOCpages. I'd recommend converting your buddy icon to a JPEG/JPG and then reupload it.Permalink

Here's an update from our server administrator on your images' recovery. It's going very slowly but everything will ~eventually~ be back online.

He said:

"I'm slowly working on manipulating the blocks (of image data) on the various disks and attempting to rebuild the complete dataset as I believe the disks that failed have enough life in them to get through this, but it is a slow process to make sure we don't lose what we have so far, hence why it is taking so much time. Believe me, this is not what I want to be doing, but i'm trying to salvage everything we can.

...

To compound all of this, [the server] died in the middle of this recovery for a week which required me to go down there [to fly from New York to the datacenter in Florida] and spend a day with it to get it back online.

Hey, just wanted to thank Sean and his team for all the hard work they've been doing trying to get the site back up. It can't be easy. I wanted to ask, if I posted new pics of my models that are down, would they be replaced by the old pics when they come back up?Permalink

Quoting John Fink
if I posted new pics of my models that are down, would they be replaced by the old pics when they come back up?

No, old images won't ever replace new ones. (MOCpages doesn't look at the photo to see if the content in the photo is the same or not).

But if you're willing: you can edit your LEGO creation, upload the photos again, and then save the page. Changes to the page are permanent, so your old (missing) images wouldn't be referenced anymore and your page would work fully. Permalink

No, old images won't ever replace new ones. (MOCpages doesn't look at the photo to see if the content in the photo is the same or not).

But if you're willing: you can edit your LEGO creation, upload the photos again, and then save the page. Changes to the page are permanent, so your old (missing) images wouldn't be referenced anymore and your page would work fully.

Quoting My Name is Anonymous
I tried to post a picture and none of the pictures came up, even right after the uploader. Is there something wrong?

Not that I'm aware of. Sean hasn't notified us of any changes to the arrangement, or any recent glitches.

I'd check for potential issues with your browser and/or computer, or look to see that you're following the recommended guidelines for loading of images (which I would assume you are, since this isn't your first attempt).

The fact that more than one of you are experiencing difficulties does raise an eyebrow, though. Keep us posted here if you try a few more times and still get the same result.Permalink

Quoting Sean Kenney
MOCpages has gotten a ton of traffic this summer, tons more than we ever could have anticipated when we bought and installed all our new servers this past fall.

As a result, last week, one of our our web servers crashed spectacularly under the excessive load. By coincidence at nearly the same time, three of our image server's hard drives failed. We have backups, and our systems admins have been working constantly over the past week, restoring all your images and using temporary extra servers to run MOCpages in the meantime.

I appreciate your patience as we buy and install new servers over the coming weeks and plan for future capacity.

Quoting Thoy Bradley
Not sure if this is relevant or not. I can't access Mocpages at all from home anymore. I checked before I left for work (30mins ago) and all I got was DNS error. All my other internet browsing is fine, just the pages that are affected. Got to work 5mins ago and it loads fine - hence why i'm writing this message.
Aparently Magma is having the same issues - spoke with him through Neatchat 40mins ago.

As I have a MO entry to upload its kinda important for me to see the pages from home :-

I can't emphasize enough that this is not an issue with my computer as every other site works fine.

Has it been constantly not working for you at home? I know that sometimes MOCpages won't work for me for an hour or two, but it usually starts working again by the next day at the latest.

Hasn't been working since yesterday, cant determine what time since I was at work when it must have stopped. It wasn't working when I got home yesterday at 0000hrs server time. 1700hrs my time.

Used Chrome and IE, neither worked, but both could see every other site I went to. It was as if the Mocpage servers had turned off.

Hmm, that's interesting. I'd give it a while, just to make sure that it's not a coincidence. Maybe try accessing MOCpages at your house using a friend's laptop that's hooked up to your internet, just to make sure that it isn't your computer specifically that doesn't like MOCpages.Permalink

i loved it and it is not even in most popular =S anymore i still have pics but i went to re add them and it was as if i was making an other creation there was no info from it at all so it kind of stinks
AHH I JUST CHECKED AND IT SAYS I DONT EVEN OWN IT WHY DOES IT SAY REYNOLD RUSS MADe IT I WAS ABOUT TO POST A COMMENT ABOUT THE PIC PROBLEMS AND IT WAS LIKE IT WAS NOT MINE!

Austin, I don't think the "missing" pictures has anything to do with the disk failure, since you have already raised a problem with this moc AND your homepage before.

Please, how much longer??!! I've been waiting for ages! It's not just me, it's the other members too! I haven;t been able to make a poster for starscream rules because of the crash! HOW MUCH LONGER!!! THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME (and the lego creations I smash on the floor because I'm tired of waiting)!!!!Permalink

I had my share of problems on mocpages, but, since yesterday, I can t even see the pics i post, I m not sure people can see them, I uploaded with the new and old uploader, 1 or multiple pics at a time, nothing works, I still don t see any images, this is no complain, as I can see the effort you guys put in this, it s merely a report, moc pages has been a very positive aspect of my life for 2 years now, and I truly appreciate it, I wish you the best of luck to fix these problems, and hope I ll be able to post my halloween moc on time. thanks a lot sean and team!!!Permalink

Quoting cyberfrank 2010
I had my share of problems on mocpages, but, since yesterday, I can t even see the pics i post, I m not sure people can see them, I uploaded with the new and old uploader, 1 or multiple pics at a time, nothing works, I still don t see any images, this is no complain, as I can see the effort you guys put in this, it s merely a report, moc pages has been a very positive aspect of my life for 2 years now, and I truly appreciate it, I wish you the best of luck to fix these problems, and hope I ll be able to post my halloween moc on time. thanks a lot sean and team!!!

I just checked and the pictures on your most recent moc are visible to me.

I suspect if you cannot view them there is an issue with the cache file on your computer. try clearing your browser history and see if that helps. Permalink

Since the night before last, I've been trying to upload a MOC, but instead, I only get an error message. I prefer to use the simple uploader, and I don't believe I've ever seen this message before. I was wondering if you all could tell me what it means.

Warning: copy(/beaker/mocpages/user_images/29725/1319550884m) [function.copy]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /beaker/mocpages/lib/upload/upload_ACTION.php on line 46Permalink

Quoting Rabid Goldfish
Since the night before last, I've been trying to upload a MOC, but instead, I only get an error message. I prefer to use the simple uploader, and I don't believe I've ever seen this message before. I was wondering if you all could tell me what it means.

Warning: copy(/beaker/mocpages/user_images/29725/1319550884m) [function.copy]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /beaker/mocpages/lib/upload/upload_ACTION.php on line 46

I second that; I have been trying for over 2 days at different times to upload pictures and the simple uploader gives the above mentioned message, and the full uploader simply doesn't show the pictures.

I have tried one picture at a time etc. but still same effect, and I have also tried uploading old pictures that are already up just to see what would happen; alas they wouldn't be uploaded also.

I have al;l recent updates to Java, and have never had problem with this before. Any advise? Permalink

I had no real problems with new mocs before yesterday, on your kind advice, I have updated to explorer 9, now, look at my halloween moc, is it visible? no one answered yet!
still, thanks a lot for willing to help me!

the problem from last week seems to have returned. the new up loader is going through the motions but no pictures are actually uploaded at all. As a result the moc appears blank (except for any text written).

This has been happening to me all day.

mocs uploaded yesterday, my own included, appear to have worked.

by the way, I'm based in spain so when I say yesterday I may be talking about a different 24 hours to some of our american users, who are about 6 hours behind so yesterday for me is today for you.

Quoting andros tempest
the problem from last week seems to have returned. the new up loader is going through the motions but no pictures are actually uploaded at all. As a result the moc appears blank (except for any text written).

This has been happening to me all day.

mocs uploaded yesterday, my own included, appear to have worked.

by the way, I'm based in spain so when I say yesterday I may be talking about a different 24 hours to some of our american users, who are about 6 hours behind so yesterday for me is today for you.

So does this issue resolve itself or is there something that can be done? It's been very frustrating attempting to upload a few times a day at different hours and to get the same message time and time again.Permalink

So does this issue resolve itself or is there something that can be done? It's been very frustrating attempting to upload a few times a day at different hours and to get the same message time and time again.

The issue appears to be something only the website technicians can fix and nothing works till they do. once fixed anything you uploaded while it wasn't working will stay broken and need to be edited to add pictures.

I've not checked today, but last night the problem was still happening.

edit - as of 15:42 Spanish time, the uploader (both old and new) was reporting broken links for uploads and therefore still not working. Permalink

I'm trying to get my account icon image (or whatever it's called to show. But instead it just shows a black square. It said it'll show within 15 minutes, but it didn't. It's been hours now. Is this because of the disk falure?Permalink

Quoting Dakota Conn
I'm trying to get my account icon image (or whatever it's called to show. But instead it just shows a black square. It said it'll show within 15 minutes, but it didn't. It's been hours now. Is this because of the disk falure?

I had this same probem. But it was becouse I used a LDD photo did you use one? if you did you will have to use a real photo.Permalink

If it's taking too long for you, do the genuflecting and Hail-Kenneying a few times.

Other than that, I haven't seen any of YOU working day and night sifting through umpteen terabytes of blurrily photographed bionicle twaddle trying to get a broken site back to full functionality.Permalink

I can't even upload pictures on MOCpages anymore! I've been on this site for almost 2 years now, and I WILL NEVER >EVER< QUIT THIS SITE. What am I gonna do? Upload nothing? Just comment on creations? Just make new webpages w/o pictures? NO!!! I don't want to! I want to upload pictures again, but now I can't, ALL THANKS to the traffic last summer and the disc failure! Sorry I snapped. Mr. Kenney (founder of MOCpages), would you please fix this problem for me? Thank you very much.Permalink

Quoting Rahkshi Poopi
I can't even upload pictures on MOCpages anymore! I've been on this site for almost 2 years now, and I WILL NEVER >EVER< QUIT THIS SITE. What am I gonna do? Upload nothing? Just comment on creations? Just make new webpages w/o pictures? NO!!! I don't want to! I want to upload pictures again, but now I can't, ALL THANKS to the traffic last summer and the disc failure! Sorry I snapped. Mr. Kenney (founder of MOCpages), would you please fix this problem for me? Thank you very much.

Quoting SAS black ops soldier
some of my pics mostly for my spector tk4 light machine gun still are not working is this the same for other people and when do you think all the pics for everyone will work

There's still a lot of my stuff that is still not back up yet either... I wait a week or so and check once in awhile, but still nothing. I think it's taking a lot longer than they expected for all the images.Permalink

Quoting 12Lego Greendude
can't upload any images at the moment... Please fix this! I have a contest entry to post and the deadline is today!!!

this problem is happening at the beginning of every week, usually sunday or monday. At worst it has taken till wednesday to fix. It isn't just affecting you other members are affected too. Who ever is running the contest should be aware of this and give you a slight extension to add your stuff. at least any REASONABLE judge would.

add a link in the group discussions for the competition to this conversation as proof. Permalink

I hope it dosent last that long, i checked my home page today and saw that my incidendent mocs had NO photos on them! [i did put pics on in the first place] My mocs were doing fine for at least 2 months, now they are goofed up!!Permalink

Ok, So I know the server crash affected a lot of existing photos, but what about new ones, as well as the image uploader itself? Uploading images has worked just fine for me up until now. When trying to add a main photo to my page I get this error message:

Warning: copy(/beaker/mocpages/user_images/12303/1322073526m) [function.copy]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /beaker/mocpages/lib/upload/upload_ACTION.php on line 46

Any ideas on how to fix this? I've tried converting the image to all the different types of files accepted by mocpages and I still get this message everytime. Kind of frustrating really :/Permalink

Quoting Nufalak of Mythada
Ok, So I know the server crash affected a lot of existing photos, but what about new ones, as well as the image uploader itself? Uploading images has worked just fine for me up until now. When trying to add a main photo to my page I get this error message:

Warning: copy(/beaker/mocpages/user_images/12303/1322073526m) [function.copy]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /beaker/mocpages/lib/upload/upload_ACTION.php on line 46

Any ideas on how to fix this? I've tried converting the image to all the different types of files accepted by mocpages and I still get this message everytime. Kind of frustrating really :/

Hmmm... I rely cant help you there. All I can say is try again later, or maybe try a different picture. I haven't had this problem.Permalink

I've had the same problem periodically (right now included). When I try to upload photos, they appear as broken images. The last time I tried, I got this message: Warning: getimagesize(/beaker/mocpages/user_images/28456/1322099305m_THUMB.jpg) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /beaker/mocpages/lib/uploader2010/upload_RESULTS_zapper.php on line 48

This problem has been on and off since the disk failure, and has become a major problem. Does anyone have an idea of what is going on, and can it be permenantly fixed anytime soon?Permalink

Quoting Nufalak of Mythada
Ok, So I know the server crash affected a lot of existing photos, but what about new ones, as well as the image uploader itself? Uploading images has worked just fine for me up until now. When trying to add a main photo to my page I get this error message:

Warning: copy(/beaker/mocpages/user_images/12303/1322073526m) [function.copy]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /beaker/mocpages/lib/upload/upload_ACTION.php on line 46

Any ideas on how to fix this? I've tried converting the image to all the different types of files accepted by mocpages and I still get this message everytime. Kind of frustrating really :/

Im most likely gonna upload today, ive never had any troble uploading at all! i wish i could help you.Permalink